JuridicsPhilippines: International Criminal Court: Prez signs on to ICC, Senate needs to consent

President Benigno Simeon Aquino III has signed the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and sent it to the Senate for concurrence in the Philippines.  Hat Tip to Romel Relagado Bageres.  "Yes!  Now it's up to the Senate to follow the lead made by the President in assuring that the country joins the global call to stop impunity and prosecute perpetrators of heinous crimes."

ICC prosecutors successfully pursued a number of the most significant leaders of the Serbian and other atrocities in the Balkans, even bringing Slobodan Milosevich to the bar of justice.  In that case, the accused died in the midst of a long trial, before the Court's justice process was complete.  In the Ruanda genocide, the ICC-related International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda prosecuted a number of the figures responsible.   More recently, shocking revelations occurred when the UN somehow leaked a report that the present regime in Ruanda wanted repressed, showing a second Rwandan genocide, this time against refugee Hutus in camps in the Congo.  Politics have interferred with any further action by the UN or the ICC.  In Sudan, ICC has successfully indicted the accused genocidist President Omar al-Bashir, but he has travelled in Africa and Arabia with impunity, ICC prosecutors being unable to arrest him.  His planned participation in the Lusaka, Zambia summit was thwarted, as his presence there woud have taken him into an ICC signatory state where there is a duty to arrest any ICC indictee.  In the present lingering genocide in Darfur, Sudan, the African Union peacekeeping forces are largely maintained by the forces of the accused Ruanda military that prevailed in the Congo, against whom gencidist allegations have been made.  The Ruanda info is based largely on Atlantic Wire  "UN Report on Rwanda Genocide shakes Africa" by Max Fisher (Aug29,2k10).

As soon as the Senate of the Philippines follows President Aquino's lead, Bashir will be subject to arrest if he visits that country.

-- posted by Lawt